Why I won't vote for Ralph

I have met folks in my life who don't vote. I always have voted, even if I've received stipulation from others. But I still do it. I tell people, when they tell me they don't vote, I say they don't have the right to complain. They say it won't make a difference anyway. They're going to do what they want to no matter what.. and that's true to a certian extent. But this is a two-way street we're on here. I think that what folks who don't participate in voting might not realize is that the more non-voters show their complacency, the more those who are in power are going to take advantage of us, all of us. Voters' and non- voters' livelihoods and rights are at stake, every year, every four years. I asked one non-voter whom was a single mother, I said, what if there was someone in office whom would cease taxation of your wages? Or, what if there was a president whom would punish deadbeat dads more than marijuana users? Or, what if your senators in the House were working on universal healthcare? Are these simply pipe dreams? Do we dream of a life better than this one only to wake up a few minutes later, load a bowl and attempt once again to a reality that seems better than this one? Most of us probably do.
But we don't have to.
I went to the Nader convention a few days ago. I like the guy for the most part. I'd never been to see a political figurehead before. It's pretty thrilling to go. I liked, actually, I agreed with pretty much everything the man had to say about refroming the country. I know this sounds dippy-liberal, but Nader cares about humans. He does. You think Bush does? Cheney's energy task force always meets behind closed doors- a blackout of information to the American public- you and me- and this is the president's right hand man. They do not care for us any more than a serial killer cares for the body he stripped the flesh off of to make his suit.
Now back to Nader. On the one hand, I hafta give this guy some credit. At least he's not being arrogant like Micheal Moore can be. However, goddamn if his career isn't making a turn for the stale. I went to Benson Polytechnic High to support him and get him on the Oregon ballot. I knew that he wasn't part of the Green Party anymore, but I went to support him anyhow. I knew that many people thought and still think that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush (sounds like four years ago... spoiler.) But I did it anyway. I don't like John Kerry- he's bought like the rest of the neocons. Yes that's right- John Kerry is a republican. He's a capitalist. He's a millionaire. So what if he fought in Vietnam? I had a glass of water yesterday. Big fucking deal. CHANGE IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN WITH KERRY, AND IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN WITH NADER, EITHER. As much as I like and support Nader, I'm not going to vote for him. It's not because he's not with the Greens, and it's not because he's not as liberal as Kucinich. It's because he's not the right person and this is not the right time. Ralph Nader is on a crusade for a third party system. This is the good part of what he is doing. We need to uderstand that it ain't about a two- party deal anymore. Right now I can't tell the left from the right when I look at their stocks and pocketbooks. More Americans ought to think outside the bun in terms of politics and parties, and that is what I believe is the biggest problem.
A vote for Nader probably will help the Bushes maintain power here. What to do instead? If you want to be a real Democrap, swallow your pride and vote for Kerry. This is going to take a long time for all the lumpen proletariats in America to realize that we have critical choices to make and very important thinking to do. We were given the intelligence that we have to make this reality something we oughtn't escape from, but we're not doing it enough. I know plenty of people who've never heard of Ralph. Just think of how many more people don't think there's a choice between right and left.
We have to take baby steps. We're only crawling now with Nader, but if we keep it going, we'll be walking- and you have to walk before you can run. I think eventually America will wake up and begin to rethink its capitalist supremacy. Even though I know that will be beyond any kind of nightmare I can fathom, the outcome would be so promising. It's like when someone has to go to therapy. They have to confront their demons and their terrors and their fears and drop their pride and their security blankets and be vulnerable. The day America does that, all will fall into chaos, and the wounds of the land will bleed infection out of its system, regenerating a new America without corruption and endless dark days. This is pretty much what people have to expect if they want the US to become healthy again. Capitalism is not the kind of political agenda which is open to reform in the ways we need it to be. Things like free healthcare and non-taxation of wages don't work for a capitalist nation because they don't add value to the economy. And the fat cats know this. And they don't want it to be that way. Ever. It's not in their interest.
I don't think Nader can lead the country to overcome capitalism and fascism. I definitely think he's helping, but not like he could be. If he wasn't doing the running-for-president-thing, he'd probably be making more of an impact on Americans to warrant change in the system and communities. He could be talking to people to get more involved in their local government. We could be finding out who are our senators and governors, and whom they endorse, and what their agendas are, and what they want to do for the city, or the state, or the country. Then people could know these things and then make more informed decisions about whom to vote for for judges, for sheriffs, for presidents . Instead he's taking on too big a task for himself to achieve successfully- not becasue he's older, but because he is not the right person for the job.
We have to take baby steps first.

Federal Court Overturns FCC Decision On Media Ownership

"The Court's decision affirms what citizens have been saying: Protecting our democratic media system means stopping Big Media from getting even bigger."

From Free Press, June 24, 2004
Calling it "an historic victory toward protecting diverse, independent and local media," Free Press today applauded the decision by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the Federal Communications Commission's dramatic loosening of media ownership rules. The court's ruling in the case, Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC, requires the agency to rewrite its controversial June 2003 decision relaxing the regulation of ownership of the newspaper, television and radio industries.
The Commission's decision, which sparked a public outcry from across the political spectrum and drew several Congressional rebukes (including one in the Senate as recently as Tuesday), is now firmly rejected. "The public, Congress, and the Courts now speak in one voice against the agency's efforts to loosen public interest media ownership limits," said Free Press Managing Director Josh Silver. "This is a tremendous victory for the millions of citizens who have been writing, emailing and calling the FCC and Congress to protest the lax media ownership protections. The Court's decision affirms what citizens have been saying: Protecting our democratic media system means stopping Big Media from getting even bigger."
The appellate ruling has specifically rejected the major rule changes concerning the cross-ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations and the concentration of broadcast ownership in local markets. Together, these rules would have allowed one company to own three TV stations, 8 radio stations, and the monopoly newspaper in a single market. Both rules have been sent back to the Commission on the grounds that the evidence and reasoning presented did not justify the changes as serving the public interest. The Court has issued nothing short of a comprehensive reversal, denying the FCC's logic and evidence on virtually every count.
In particular, the Court took aim at the agency's faulty methodology. The so-called Diversity Index, a key tool used by the agency to weigh the relative influence of various media channels on local publics, was rejected by the Court in accordance with arguments by public interest analysts and attorneys that it was hopelessly flawed.
Critically, the Court rejected the Commission's primary defense that Congress had ordered a gradual loosening of ownership rules in the 1996 Telecommunications Act. In the year since the original decision, the FCC argued that ownership limits should be removed unless evidence could be shown to warrant their retention. The Court has reversed that burden of proof. Public interest ownership limits should be kept in place unless sufficient evidence can be shown to warrant their removal.
"We call on the FCC to make the effort to get it right this time," said Free Press founder and media scholar Robert McChesney. "Media ownership rules should protect the public interest, not the pocket books of media giants."
The court's decision does not affect a White House-negotiated deal to lift the national broadcast audience cap - the maximum percent of national television households that a single company can reach with its stations - from 35 percent to 39 percent. That deal, attached to a 2004 spending bill, was signed into law by President Bush in January.

See also -
Future of the Media

Media ownership chart

Guilty by Education?

Are we or are we not responsible for that which we do not choose (i.e., race, gender, class)? Having grown up as a privilaged, middle class, American I have to wonder....can I really be condemned or applauded for the life I was born into? If we are unaware of the consequences of our actions, should we be persecuted or instead be exposed to new truths?

I refuse to feel guilty for being given an opportunity for an education just because it is not an equal opportunity. I not only value my education but strive towards a day when truth in education is available to all. This is critical for social awareness, social justice, and change. Rather than feeling ashamed that we have taken more than our share, more than many members of the working class will ever afford, can we not use our experiences to educate others, to spread knowledge, to lift the oppressed and to take part in a revolution? A higher education is not to be used as a tool to separate the elite from the rest, it is to be used to create community by uniting all of it's members.

Return of Nader

Nader Oregon nominating convention June 26
Jason Kafoury, June 10, 2004

Ralph Nader will hold a nominating convention to put his name on the Oregon ballot for President on Saturday, June 26 from 5-7 pm at Benson High auditorium. Nader will speak on the disastrous war in Iraq.

Our earlier convention in April was organized at the last minute and we fell short of the 1,000 registered voters we needed. We must not fail Ralph again, YOU can make the difference.

The question is whether America will debate the Iraq War in 2004. Both Bush and Kerry support sending more troops, "staying the course," and the policy of pre-emptive war.

Nader will BRING OUR TROOPS HOME.

If you want a debate on the War this fall, you must make it happen. Please volunteer now, then round up your friends, family and neighbors to come on June 26.

To volunteer to help spread the word about this convention, call 503-224-2647 ext. 112 or email jkafoury@votenader.org.

We need help with:

* Putting up posters
* Passing fliers at events
* Making phone calls
* Doing research
* Helping at the convention

http://naderoregon.org/

An opportunity

The Portland Town Meeting on the Future of Media

Thursday June 24th
Time: 5:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Title: FCC town hall meeting
Portland, OR
Location: Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE MLK Blvd.
Speaker: FCC & You
Topic/Issue: Media

Oregon Convention Center
Oregon Ballroom #204
777 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd

Featuring special guests Federal Communications Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein.

Confirmed panelists include:

* Michael Powell, Owner of Powell's City of Books (not the spoiled child of a war criminal)
* David Leiken, Owner of Double Tee Productions
* Madylyn Elder, President of Communications Workers of America Local 7901
* Michael Brown, President of Brown Broadcast Services
* David Olsen, Executive Director of Mt. Hood Cable Regulatory Commission
* Nigel Ballard, Wireless Director for Matrix Networks, Member of the Portland Telecommunications Steering Committee
* L.C. Hansen, KBOO Board Member

This event is free and open to the public, and is presented in partnership with City Club of Portland, MIPRAP, Jobs With Justice, Communications Workers of America Local 7901, American Federation of Musicians Local 99, and the Mt. Hood Cable Regulatory Commission.

Please keep testimony to two minutes to ensure enough time for all to express their views. For more information, call Andrea Cano at 503.731.8874 or email midivinaloca@earthlink.net.

Fahrenheit 9/11

Michael Moore Is Ready for His Close-Up
By PHILIP SHENON
New York Times
Published: June 20, 2004

HOLLYWOOD, Calif.

MICHAEL MOORE is not coy about his hopes for "Fahrenheit 9/11," his blistering documentary attack on President Bush and the war in Iraq. He wants it to be remembered as the first big-audience, election-year film that helped unseat a president.

"And it's not just a hope," the Oscar-winning filmmaker said in a phone interview last week, describing focus groups in Michigan in April at which, after seeing the movie, previously undecided voters expressed eagerness to defeat Mr. Bush. "We found that if you entered the theater on the fence, you fell off it somewhere during those two hours," he said. "It ignites a fire in people who had given up."

The movie's indictment of the president is nothing if not sprawling. Mr. Moore suggests that Mr. Bush and his administration jeopardized national security in an effort to placate Bush family cronies in Saudi Arabia, that the White House helped members of Mr. bin Laden's family to flee the United States after Sept. 11 and that the administration manipulated terrorism alert levels in order to scare Americans into supporting the invasion of Iraq.

Mr. Moore's previous films generated a cottage industry of conservative commentators eager to prove sloppiness and exaggeration in his films; a handful of mainstream critics have also found flaws. But if "Fahrenheit 9/11" attracts the audience Mr. Moore and his distributors are predicting, Mr. Moore may face an onslaught of fact-checking unlike anything he — or any other documentary filmmaker — has ever experienced. After all, White House officials and the Bush family began impugning the film even before any of them had seen it.

"Outrageously false," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, last month when told about the film's assertion of a sinister connection between Mr. Bush and the family of Osama bin Laden. The former president George H. W. Bush was quoted in The New York Daily News calling Mr. Moore a "slime ball" and describing the documentary as "a vicious personal attack on our son."

So how will Mr. Moore's movie stand up under close examination? Is the film's depiction of Mr. Bush as a lazy and duplicitous leader, blinded by his family's financial ties to Arab moneymen and the Saudi Arabian royal family, true to fact?

Mr. Moore and his distributors have refused to circulate copies of the film and its script before the film's release this Friday; his production team said that as of last Wednesday, there was no final script because the film was still undergoing minor editing — for clarity, they said, not accuracy.

After a year spent covering the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, I was recently allowed to attend a Hollywood screening. Based on that single viewing, and after separating out what is clearly presented as Mr. Moore's opinion from what is stated as fact, it seems safe to say that central assertions of fact in "Fahrenheit 9/11" are supported by the public record (indeed, many of them will be familiar to those who have closely followed Mr. Bush's political career).

Mr. Moore is on firm ground in arguing that the Bushes, like many prominent Texas families with oil interests, have profited handsomely from their relationships with prominent Saudis, including members of the royal family and of the large and fabulously wealthy bin Laden clan, which has insisted it long ago disowned Osama. Mr. Moore spends several minutes in the film documenting ties between the president and James R. Bath, a financial advisor to a prominent member of the bin Laden family who was an original investor in Mr. Bush's Arbusto energy company and who served with the future president in the Air National Guard in the early 1970's. The Bath friendship, which indirectly links Mr. Bush to the family of the world's most notorious terrorist, has received less attention from national news organization than it has from reporters in Texas, but it has been well documented.

Mr. Moore charges that President Bush and his aides paid too little attention to warnings in the summer of 2001 that Al Qaeda was about to attack, including a detailed Aug. 6, 2001, C.I.A. briefing that warned of terrorism within the country's borders. In its final report next month, the Sept. 11 commission can be expected to offer support to this assertion. Mr. Moore says that instead of focusing on Al Qaeda, the president spent 42 percent of his first eight months in office on vacation; the figure came not from a conspiracy-hungry Web site but from a calculation by The Washington Post.

The most valid criticisms of the film are likely to involve the artful way that Mr. Moore connects the facts, and whether he has left out others that might undermine his scalding attack. A great many statistics fly by in the movie — such as assertions that 6 percent to 7 percent of the United States is owned by Saudi Arabians, and that Saudi companies have paid more than $1.4 billion to Bush family interests. But Mr. Moore doesn't explain how he arrived at them, or what these vague interests comprise. Mr. Moore and his team say they have news reports and other evidence to back up the numbers and that it will be posted on his Web site (www.michaelmoore.com) after the film's release.

Mr. Moore may also be criticized for the way he portrays the evacuation of the extended bin Laden family from the United States after Sept. 11. As the Sept. 11 commission has found, the Saudi government was able to pull strings at senior levels of the Bush administration to help the bin Ladens leave the United States. But while the film clearly suggests that the flights occurred at a time when all air traffic was grounded immediately after the attacks ("Even Ricky Martin couldn't fly," Mr. Moore says over video of the singer wandering in an airport lobby), the Sept. 11 commission said in a report this April that there was "no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace" and that the F.B.I. had concluded that no one aboard the flights was involved in Sept. 11.

In conversation, Mr. Moore defended the scene, saying his goal was to show how the White House was eager to bend and break the rules for Saudi friends — in this case, the extended family of the terrorist who had just brought down the twin towers and attacked the Pentagon. And as reporters have found, the White House still refuses to document fully how the flights were arranged.

"I don't want to get lost in the forest because of a single tree," Mr. Moore said. "The main point I want people to go away with is that these people got special treatment because they were bin Ladens or Saudi royals, and you and I would never have been given that treatment."

Mr. Moore may also have to defend his portrayal of Mr. Bush's presidency as sinking prior to Sept. 11, citing an inability to win support for his legislation. But he fails to mention that in May, Congress agreed to Mr. Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut, the centerpiece of his legislative agenda. Mr. Moore said that his review of news coverage before Sept. 11 shows that, with or without the tax cut, the Bush presidency was floundering before the terrorist attacks. Mr. Moore said, "I've read what other people wrote and said at the time, and he was definitely on the ropes."

Mr. Moore usually revels in his role as the target of conservative attacks, and his delight in playing the mischievous, little-guy bomb-thrower has brought him fame, wealth and the devotion of fans more interested in rhetorical force than precision. But with "Fahrenheit" he has taken on his biggest and best-defended target yet, and his production staff says that on his orders they have taken no chances in checking and double-checking the film, knowing Bush supporters would pounce on factual mistakes.

Mr. Moore is readying for a conservative counterattack, saying he has created a political-style "war room" to offer an instant response to any assault on the film's credibility. He has retained Chris Lehane, a Democratic Party strategist known as a master of the black art of "oppo," or opposition research, used to discredit detractors. He also hired outside fact-checkers, led by a former general counsel of The New Yorker and a veteran member of that magazine's legendary fact-checking team, to vet the film. And he is threatening to go one step further, saying he has consulted with lawyers who can bring defamation suits against anyone who maligns the film or damages his reputation.

"We want the word out," says Mr. Moore, who says he should have responded more quickly to allegations of inaccuracy in his Oscar-winning 2002 anti-gun documentary, "Bowling for Columbine." "Any attempts to libel me will be met by force," he said, not an ounce of humor in his familiar voice. "The most important thing we have is truth on our side. If they persist in telling lies, knowingly telling a lie with malice, then I'll take them to court."

As proof of its scrupulousness, the Moore team cites adjustments it made to the film's portrayal of Attorney General John Ashcroft. The film is brutal to Mr. Ashcroft, depicting him as a glassy-eyed architect of efforts to shred the Constitution, who became Attorney General only after he proved himself so unpopular in his home state of Missouri that he lost a Senate race to a former Democratic governor who died in a plane crash a month before election day. "Voters preferred the dead guy," Mr. Moore deadpans in the film, a line that drew belly laughs at recent preview screenings. (In reality, voters knew they were in effect casting ballots for the governor's widow).

An earlier version of the film, however, included a reference to a widely circulated charge, broadcast by CBS News in July 2001, that Mr. Ashcroft had received warning of threats and stopped flying on commercial airlines. Tia Lessin, supervising producer of "Fahrenheit 9/11," said the reference to the CBS report was cut after Mr. Moore's fact-checking team found evidence that Mr. Ashcroft had flown commercially at least twice that summer.

"We have gone through every single word of this film — literally every word — and verified its accuracy," said Joanne Doroshow, a public interest lawyer and filmmaker who shared in a 1993 Oscar for documentaries and who joined the fact-checking effort last month. Ms. Doroshow is responsible for preparing what she calls a "fact-checking bible," with material ranging from newspaper and magazine articles to copies of the Federal Register, that will allow the film's lawyers and publicists to provide backup for its allegations.

That said, Mr. Moore's fact-checkers does not view the film as straight reportage. "This is an Op-Ed piece, it's not a news report," said Dev Chatillon, the former general counsel for The New Yorker. "This is not The New York Times, it's not a network news report. The facts have to be right, yes, but this is an individual's view of current events. And I'm a very firm believer that it is within everybody's right to examine the actions of their government."

Besides, it may turn out that the most talked-about moments in the film are the least impeachable. Mr. Moore makes extensive use of obscure footage from White House and network-news video archives, including long scenes that capture President Bush at his least articulate. For the White House, the most devastating segment of "Fahrenheit 9/11" may be the video of a befuddled-looking President Bush staying put for nearly seven minutes at a Florida elementary school on the morning of Sept. 11, continuing to read a copy of "My Pet Goat" to schoolchildren even after an aide has told him that a second plane has struck the twin towers. Mr. Bush's slow, hesitant reaction to the disastrous news has never been a secret. But seeing the actual footage, with the minutes ticking by, may prove more damaging to the White House than all the statistics in the world.  

____________________________________________________
Fahrenheit 9/11 will be in theaters on Friday June 25th.
If it is playing initially at a mega-money-plex, it will in no time be playing at a locally run theater. Support locally owned businesses!

www.michaelmoore.com
www.fahrenheit911

This is the Fight of Our Lives

This is the Fight of Our Lives
by Bill Moyers
Keynote speech
Inequality Matters Forum
New York University
June 3, 2004

"The middle class and working poor are told that what's happening to them is the consequence of Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand.' This is a lie. What's happening to them is the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that in its hunger for government subsidies has made an idol of power, and a string of political decisions favoring the powerful and the privileged who bought the political system right out from under us."
-- Bill Moyers, Keynote speech, June 3, 2004

It is important from time to time to remember that some things are worth getting mad about.

Here's one: On March 10 of this year, on page B8, with a headline that stretched across all six columns, The New York Times reported that tuition in the city's elite private schools would hit $26,000 for the coming school year -- for kindergarten as well as high school. On the same page, under a two-column headline, Michael Wineraub wrote about a school in nearby Mount Vernon, the first stop out of the Bronx, with a student body that is 97 percent black. It is the poorest school in the town: nine out of ten children qualify for free lunches; one out of 10 lives in a homeless shelter. During black history month this past February, a sixth grader wanted to write a report on Langston Hughes. There were no books on Langston Hughes in the library -- no books about the great poet, nor any of his poems. There is only one book in the library on Frederick Douglass. None on Rosa Parks, Josephine Baker, Leontyne Price, or other giants like them in the modern era. In fact, except for a few Newberry Award books the librarian bought with her own money, the library is mostly old books -- largely from the 1950s and 60s when the school was all white. A 1960 child's primer on work begins with a youngster learning how to be a telegraph delivery boy. All the workers in the book -- the dry cleaner, the deliveryman, the cleaning lady -- are white. There's a 1967 book about telephones which says: "when you phone you usually dial the number. But on some new phones you can push buttons." The newest encyclopedia dates from l991, with two volumes -- "b" and "r" -- missing. There is no card catalog in the library -- no index cards or computer.

Something to get mad about.

Here's something else: Caroline Payne's face and gums are distorted because her Medicaid-financed dentures don't fit. Because they don't fit, she is continuously turned down for jobs on account of her appearance. Caroline Payne is one of the people in David Shipler's new book,' The Working Poor: Invisible in America'. She was born poor, and in spite of having once owned her own home and having earned a two-year college degree, Caroline Payne has bounced from one poverty-wage job to another all her life, equipped with the will to move up, but not the resources to deal with unexpected and overlapping problems like a mentally handicapped daughter, a broken marriage, a sudden layoff crisis that forced her to sell her few assets, pull up roots and move on. "In the house of the poor," Shipler writes "...the walls are thin and fragile and troubles seep into one another."

Here's something else to get mad about. Two weeks ago, the House of Representatives, the body of Congress owned and operated by the corporate, political, and religious right, approved new tax credits for children. Not for poor children, mind you. But for families earning as much as $309,000 a year -- families that already enjoy significant benefits from earlier tax cuts. The editorial page of The Washington Post called this "bad social policy, bad tax policy, and bad fiscal policy. You'd think they'd be embarrassed," said the Post, "but they're not."

And this, too, is something to get mad about. Nothing seems to embarrass the political class in Washington today. Not the fact that more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other industrial nation; not the fact that millions of workers are actually making less money today in real dollars than they did twenty years ago; not the fact that working people are putting in longer and longer hours and still falling behind; not the fact that while we have the most advanced medical care in the world, nearly 44 million Americans -- eight out of ten of them in working families -- are uninsured and cannot get the basic care they need.

Astonishing as it seems, no one in official Washington seems embarrassed by the fact that the gap between rich and poor is greater than it's been in 50 years -- the worst inequality among all western nations. Or that we are experiencing a shift in poverty. For years it was said those people down there at the bottom were single, jobless mothers. For years they were told work, education, and marriage is how they move up the economic ladder. But poverty is showing up where we didn't expect it -- among families that include two parents, a worker, and a head of the household with more than a high school education. These are the newly poor. Our political, financial and business class expects them to climb out of poverty on an escalator moving downward.

Let me tell you about the Stanleys and the Neumanns. During the last decade, I produced a series of documentaries for PBS called "Surviving the Good Times." The title refers to the boom time of the '90s when the country achieved the longest period of economic growth in its entire history. Some good things happened then, but not everyone shared equally in the benefits. To the contrary. The decade began with a sustained period of downsizing by corporations moving jobs out of America and many of those people never recovered what was taken from them. We decided early on to tell the stories of two families in Milwaukee -- one black, one white -- whose breadwinners were laid off in the first wave of layoffs in 1991. We reported on how they were coping with the wrenching changes in their lives, and we stayed with them over the next ten years as they tried to find a place in the new global economy. They're the kind of Americans my mother would have called "the salt of the earth." They love their kids, care about their communities, go to church every Sunday, and work hard all week -- both mothers have had to take full-time jobs.

During our time with them, the fathers in both families became seriously ill. One had to stay in the hospital two months, putting his family $30,000 in debt because they didn't have adequate health insurance. We were there with our camera when the bank started to foreclose on the modest home of the other family because they couldn't meet the mortgage payments after dad lost his good-paying manufacturing job. Like millions of Americans, the Stanleys and the Neumanns were playing by the rules and still getting stiffed. By the end of the decade they were running harder but slipping behind, and the gap between them and prosperous America was widening.

What turns their personal tragedy into a political travesty is that they are patriotic. They love this country. But they no longer believe they matter to the people who run the country. When our film opens, both families are watching the inauguration of Bill Clinton on television in 1992. By the end of the decade they were no longer paying attention to politics. They don't see it connecting to their lives. They don't think their concerns will ever be addressed by the political, corporate, and media elites who make up our dominant class. They are not cynical, because they are deeply religious people with no capacity for cynicism, but they know the system is rigged against them. They know this, and we know this. For years now a small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income while large corporations and financial institutions have obtained unprecedented levels of economic and political power over daily life. In 1960, the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 30 fold. Four decades later it is more than 75 fold.

Such concentrations of wealth would be far less of an issue if the rest of society were benefiting proportionately. But that's not the case. As the economist Jeff Madrick reminds us, the pressures of inequality on middle and working class Americans are now quite severe. "The strain on working people and on family life, as spouses have gone to work in dramatic numbers, has become significant. VCRs and television sets are cheap, but higher education, health care, public transportation, drugs, housing and cars have risen faster in price than typical family incomes. And life has grown neither calm nor secure for most Americans, by any means." You can find many sources to support this conclusion. I like the language of a small outfit here in New York called the Commonwealth Foundation/Center for the Renewal of American Democracy. They conclude that working families and the poor "are losing ground under economic pressures that deeply affect household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, political participation, and civic life."

Household economics is not the only area where inequality is growing in America. Equality doesn't mean equal incomes, but a fair and decent society where money is not the sole arbiter of status or comfort. In a fair and just society, the commonwealth will be valued even as individual wealth is encouraged.

Let me make something clear here. I wasn't born yesterday. I'm old enough to know that the tension between haves and have-nots are built into human psychology, it is a constant in human history, and it has been a factor in every society. But I also know America was going to be different. I know that because I read Mr. Jefferson's writings, Mr. Lincoln's speeches and other documents in the growing American creed. I presumptuously disagreed with Thomas Jefferson about human equality being self-evident. Where I lived, neither talent, nor opportunity, nor outcomes were equal. Life is rarely fair and never equal. So what could he possibly have meant by that ringing but ambiguous declaration: "All men are created equal"? Two things, possibly. One, although none of us are good, all of us are sacred (Glenn Tinder), that's the basis for thinking we are by nature kin.

Second, he may have come to see the meaning of those words through the experience of the slave who was his mistress. As is now widely acknowledged, the hands that wrote "all men are created equal" also stroked the breasts and caressed the thighs of a black woman named Sally Hennings. She bore him six children whom he never acknowledged as his own, but who were the only slaves freed by his will when he died -- the one request we think Sally Hennings made of her master. Thomas Jefferson could not have been insensitive to the flesh-and-blood woman in his arms. He had to know she was his equal in her desire for life, her longing for liberty, her passion for happiness.

In his book on the Declaration, my late friend Mortimer Adler said Jefferson realized that whatever things are really good for any human being are really good for all other human beings. The happy or good life is essentially the same for all: a satisfaction of the same needs inherent in human nature. A just society is grounded in that recognition. So Jefferson kept as a slave a woman whose nature he knew was equal to his. All Sally Hennings got from her long sufferance -- perhaps it was all she sought from what may have grown into a secret and unacknowledged love -- was that he let her children go. "Let my children go" -- one of the oldest of all petitions. It has long been the promise of America -- a broken promise, to be sure. But the idea took hold that we could fix what was broken so that our children would live a bountiful life. We could prevent the polarization between the very rich and the very poor that poisoned other societies. We could provide that each and every citizen would enjoy the basic necessities of life, a voice in the system of self-government, and a better chance for their children. We could preclude the vast divides that produced the turmoil and tyranny of the very countries from which so many of our families had fled.

We were going to do these things because we understood our dark side -- none of us is good -- but we also understood the other side -- all of us are sacred. From Jefferson forward we have grappled with these two notions in our collective head -- that we are worthy of the creator but that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Believing the one and knowing the other, we created a country where the winners didn't take all. Through a system of checks and balances we were going to maintain a safe, if shifting, equilibrium between wealth and commonwealth. We believed equitable access to public resources is the lifeblood of any democracy. So early on [in Jeff Madrick's description,] primary schooling was made free to all. States changed laws to protect debtors, often the relatively poor, against their rich creditors. Charters to establish corporations were open to most, if not all, white comers, rather than held for the elite. The government encouraged Americans to own their own piece of land, and even supported squatters' rights. The court challenged monopoly -- all in the name of we the people.

In my time we went to public schools. My brother made it to college on the GI bill. When I bought my first car for $450 I drove to a subsidized university on free public highways and stopped to rest in state-maintained public parks. This is what I mean by the commonwealth. Rudely recognized in its formative years, always subject to struggle, constantly vulnerable to reactionary counterattacks, the notion of America as a shared project has been the central engine of our national experience.

Until now. I don't have to tell you that a profound transformation is occurring in America: the balance between wealth and the commonwealth is being upended. By design. Deliberately. We have been subjected to what the Commonwealth Foundation calls "a fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have shaped public responsibility for social harms arising from the excesses of private power." From land, water and other natural resources, to media and the broadcast and digital spectrums, to scientific discovery and medical breakthroughs, and to politics itself, a broad range of the American commons is undergoing a powerful shift toward private and corporate control. And with little public debate. Indeed, what passes for 'political debate' in this country has become a cynical charade behind which the real business goes on -- the not-so-scrupulous business of getting and keeping power in order to divide up the spoils.

We could have seen this coming if we had followed the money. The veteran Washington reporter, Elizabeth Drew, says "the greatest change in Washington over the past 25 years -- in its culture, in the way it does business and the ever-burgeoning amount of business transactions that go on here -- has been in the preoccupation with money." Jeffrey Birnbaum, who covered Washington for nearly twenty years for the Wall Street Journal, put it more strongly: "[campaign cash] has flooded over the gunwales of the ship of state and threatens to sink the entire vessel. Political donations determine the course and speed of many government actions that deeply affect our daily lives." Politics is suffocating from the stranglehold of money. During his brief campaign in 2000, before he was ambushed by the dirty tricks of the religious right in South Carolina and big money from George W. Bush's wealthy elites, John McCain said elections today are nothing less than an "influence peddling scheme in which both parties compete to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder."

Small wonder that with the exception of people like John McCain and Russ Feingold, official Washington no longer finds anything wrong with a democracy dominated by the people with money. Hit the pause button here, and recall Roger Tamraz. He's the wealthy oilman who paid $300,000 to get a private meeting in the White House with President Clinton; he wanted help in securing a big pipeline in central Asia. This got him called before congressional hearings on the financial excesses of the 1996 campaign. If you watched the hearings on C-Span you heard him say he didn't think he had done anything out of the ordinary. When they pressed him he told the senators: "Look, when it comes to money and politics, you make the rules. I'm just playing by your rules." One senator then asked if Tamraz had registered and voted. And he was blunt in his reply: "No, senator, I think money's a bit more (important) than the vote."

So what does this come down to, practically?

Here is one accounting:

"When powerful interests shower Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they often get what they want. But it's ordinary citizens and firms that pay the price and most of them never see it coming. This is what happens if you don't contribute to their campaigns or spend generously on lobbying. You pick up a disproportionate share of America's tax bill. You pay higher prices for a broad range of products from peanuts to prescriptions. You pay taxes that others in a similar situation have been excused from paying. You're compelled to abide by laws while others are granted immunity from them. You must pay debts that you incur while others do not. You're barred from writing off on your tax returns some of the money spent on necessities while others deduct the cost of their entertainment. You must run your business by one set of rules, while the government creates another set for your competitors. In contrast, the fortunate few who contribute to the right politicians and hire the right lobbyists enjoy all the benefits of their special status. Make a bad business deal; the government bails them out. If they want to hire workers at below market wages, the government provides the means to do so. If they want more time to pay their debts, the government gives them an extension. If they want immunity from certain laws, the government gives it. If they want to ignore rules their competition must comply with, the government gives its approval. If they want to kill legislation that is intended for the public, it gets killed."

I'm not quoting from Karl Marx's Das Kapital or Mao's Little Red Book. I'm quoting Time magazine. Time's premier investigative journalists -- Donald Bartlett and James Steele -- concluded in a series last year that America now has "government for the few at the expense of the many." Economic inequality begets political inequality, and vice versa.

That's why the Stanleys and the Neumanns were turned off by politics. It's why we're losing the balance between wealth and the commonwealth. It's why we can't put things right. And it is the single most destructive force tearing at the soul of democracy. Hear the great justice Learned Hand on this: "If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: 'Thou shalt not ration justice.' " Learned Hand was a prophet of democracy. The rich have the right to buy more homes than anyone else. They have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more gizmos than anyone else, more clothes and vacations than anyone else. But they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else.

I know, I know: this sounds very much like a call for class war. But the class war was declared a generation ago, in a powerful paperback polemic by William Simon, who was soon to be Secretary of the Treasury. He called on the financial and business class, in effect, to take back the power and privileges they had lost in the depression and new deal. They got the message, and soon they began a stealthy class war against the rest of society and the principles of our democracy. They set out to trash the social contract, to cut their workforces and wages, to scour the globe in search of cheap labor, and to shred the social safety net that was supposed to protect people from hardships beyond their control. Business Week put it bluntly at the time: "Some people will obviously have to do with less....it will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more."

The middle class and working poor are told that what's happening to them is the consequence of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand." This is a lie. What's happening to them is the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that in its hunger for government subsidies has made an idol of power, and a string of political decisions favoring the powerful and the privileged who bought the political system right out from under us.

To create the intellectual framework for this takeover of public policy they funded conservative think tanks -- The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, and the American Enterprise Institute -- that churned out study after study advocating their agenda.

To put political muscle behind these ideas they created a formidable political machine. One of the few journalists to cover the issues of class -- Thomas Edsall of The Washington Post -- wrote: "During the 1970s, business refined its ability to act as a class, submerging competitive instincts in favor of joint, cooperate action in the legislative area." Big business political action committees flooded the political arena with a deluge of dollars. And they built alliances with the religious right -- Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition -- who mounted a cultural war providing a smokescreen for the class war, hiding the economic plunder of the very people who were enlisted as foot soldiers in the cause of privilege.

In a book to be published this summer, Daniel Altman describes what he calls the "neo-economy -- a place without taxes, without a social safety net, where rich and poor live in different financial worlds -- and [said Altman] it's coming to America." He's a little late. It's here. Says Warren Buffett, the savviest investor of them all: "My class won."

Look at the spoils of victory:

Over the past three years, they've pushed through $2 trillion dollars in tax cuts -- almost all tilted towards the wealthiest people in the country.

Cuts in taxes on the largest incomes.

Cuts in taxes on investment income.

And cuts in taxes on huge inheritances.

More than half of the benefits are going to the wealthiest one percent. You could call it trickle-down economics, except that the only thing that trickled down was a sea of red ink in our state and local governments, forcing them to cut services for and raise taxes on middle class working America.

Now the Congressional Budget Office forecasts deficits totaling $2.75 trillion over the next ten years.

These deficits have been part of their strategy. Some of you will remember that Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to warn us 20 years ago, when he predicted that President Ronald Reagan's real strategy was to force the government to cut domestic social programs by fostering federal deficits of historic dimensions. Reagan's own budget director, David Stockman, admitted as such. Now the leading rightwing political strategist, Grover Norquist, says the goal is to "starve the beast" -- with trillions of dollars in deficits resulting from trillions of dollars in tax cuts, until the United States Government is so anemic and anorexic it can be drowned in the bathtub.

There's no question about it: The corporate conservatives and their allies in the political and religious right are achieving a vast transformation of American life that only they understand because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries. In creating the greatest economic inequality in the advanced world, they have saddled our nation, our states, and our cities and counties with structural deficits that will last until our children's children are ready for retirement, and they are systematically stripping government of all its functions except rewarding the rich and waging war.

And they are proud of what they have done to our economy and our society. If instead of practicing journalism I was writing for Saturday Night Live, I couldn't have made up the things that this crew have been saying. The president's chief economic adviser says shipping technical and professional jobs overseas is good for the economy. The president's Council of Economic Advisers report that hamburger chefs in fast food restaurants can be considered manufacturing workers. The president's Federal Reserve Chairman says that the tax cuts may force cutbacks in social security - but hey, we should make the tax cuts permanent anyway. The president's Labor Secretary says it doesn't matter if job growth has stalled because "the stock market is the ultimate arbiter."

You just can't make this stuff up. You have to hear it to believe it. This may be the first class war in history where the victims will die laughing.

But what they are doing to middle class and working Americans -- and to the workings of American democracy -- is no laughing matter. Go online and read the transcripts of Enron traders in the energy crisis four years ago, discussing how they were manipulating the California power market in telephone calls in which they gloat about ripping off "those poor grandmothers." Read how they talk about political contributions to politicians like "Kenny Boy" Lay's best friend George W. Bush. Go on line and read how Citigroup has been fined $70 Million for abuses in loans to low-income, high risk borrowers - the largest penalty ever imposed by the Federal Reserve. A few clicks later, you can find the story of how a subsidiary of the corporate computer giant NEC has been fined over $20 million after pleading guilty to corruption in a federal plan to bring Internet access to poor schools and libraries. And this, the story says, is just one piece of a nationwide scheme to rip off the government and the poor.

Let's face the reality: If ripping off the public trust; if distributing tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the country into deficits deliberately to starve social benefits; if requiring states to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor; if squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force resembles a nation of serfs -- if this isn't class war, what is?

It's un-American. It's unpatriotic. And it's wrong.

But I don't need to tell you this. You wouldn't be here if you didn't know it. Your presence at this gathering confirms that while an America with liberty and justice for all is a broken promise, it is not a lost cause. Once upon a time I thought the mass media -- my industry -- would help mend this broken promise and save this cause. After all, the sight of police dogs attacking peaceful demonstrators forced America to recognize the reality of racial injustice. The sight of carnage in Vietnam forced us to recognize the war was unwinnable. The sight of terrorists striking the World Trade Center woke us from a long slumber of denial and distraction. I thought the mass media might awaken Americans to the reality that this ideology of winner-take-all is working against them and not for them. I was wrong. With honorable exceptions, we can't count on the mass media.

What we need is a mass movement of people like you. Get mad, yes -- there's plenty to be mad about. Then get organized and get busy. This is the fight of our lives.

Published on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 by Inequality.org

Fahrenheit 9/11 ? Hell No!

editors note: this piece of shit was written by an idiot - me.

How can I endorse that fat, did I mention fat, rich SOB Michael Moore? Sure, his movie will inform all of you white fat middle and upper class computer owning white people about the extremely fucked up president and the current war. If you didn't already know, something is wrong with this stituation and you should probably shoot yourself in the head. DO US A FAVOR AND KILL YOURSELF.

The fact is that everything is totally fucked up - IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN - so the best thing to do, instead of watching this film that will only make certain rich people (i.e. Michael Moore) more rich, is to die. Who are we to judge the actions of the rich? They have always been in power, we can't even imagine a world without them, let alone build one.

Maybe what we should all do is start support groups to deal with our liberal guilt for living our lives on the backs of the third world. A place where we can cut off all of our white skin and give away all of the things we "own". I mean, look at this website! Most of the people who write for this site are from the middle class (which is almost an extinct group - god bless) or the upper class. Most of us are white liberals who hate the rich for fucking everything up forever, for this world of oppression that will never change. IT WILL NEVER CHANGE! The rich are never going to decide that they should be our economic/cultural equals. That is completely out of the question.

I realize that this is a movie review, but you know what - fuck the movie! Fuck properly written articles aimed at one single point. I will not be contained by the richman's proper essay writing techniques! In fact, I will stop even trying to spell big words and instead make up my own. GIUOD = that means we're all fucked.

Have a happy movie feeding your liberal guilt white people!

upon seeing the movie a few times, I have to say it was really good

Deviance as a means of profit

At first glance, deviance comes off as an act which is unbecoming and which can lead to punishment, rejection, or isolation. Yet more and more, deviance occurs in our society without mention, or without anyone acknowledging or questioning the reasons behind it. When deviance is encouraged as a means of making a profit for the larger institutions which make up our society, we head down a dark and dangerous road.

In America, the idea of a criminal, which initially comes to mind, is usually a minority committing a violent crime. Our nightly news stories always include armed robberies, police chases, murder, assault, rape, and a variety of other illegal actions which can rattle your nerves. Since this type of criminal activity is reported every night on the news, it must be safe to assume that it is the most costly criminal activity going on. Assuming such would be a terrible mistake. As the F.B.I. reports, street crimes cost about $4 billion a year, while white-collar “suite crime” costs about $200 billion a year (Chomsky, 1996:34). Why does the media only alert us about street crime and seldom about white-collar crime? Perhaps it isn’t entertaining enough, as an image of a business man taking millions from shareholders cannot compete during sweeps week with a video of a bank robbery. Not including criminal activity, it is estimated that there is $1.5 trillion in undeclared income each year (Schlosser, 2003:6). Deviant behavior, often hard to track, can lead to great amounts of wealth for both the individual and their organizations.

With billion dollar companies using off-shore accounts to evade taxes, the hard workers of this country get stuck with the bill. An alarming sixty percent of corporations paid no taxes whatsoever between 1996 - 2000 (Center for American Progress, 2004). With President Bush’s tax cut, corporations got an even bigger break than before, while the middle- to lower class workers got little to nothing of a relief in their taxes. The current administration’s attitude and actions towards big business has allowed more and more deviance to go unnoticed, or it has simply become normal, leaving the state of deviance, and becoming a legal loophole. With Enron and Tyco in the news, many other large companies are left out of the spotlight and their close ties to governmental officials goes unreported.

It is no secret that companies have their hand in the pockets of lawmakers and other politicians. What is concerning is the amount of pull corporations can have in government. When the government becomes a corporate-connected network making up a presidential cabinet, it is downright frightening. President Bush, an ex-oilman himself, appointed a dozen members of his cabinet who were all connected one way or another, to mega-corporations. Who is the Energy Secretary? None other than Spencer Abraham, who was the number one recipient of campaign contributions from the automotive industry. While the debate concerning emission regulations for vehicles continues, Abraham is the man in charge of such decisions. Ann Veneman, the Agriculture Secretary, served on the board of Calgene Inc. which was eventually bought out by Monsanto. Monsanto is the nation’s largest biotech company, making many controversial genetically engineered foods (Center for Responsive Politics, 2001). The corporation also strongly opposes the idea of labeling foods of such technology, and so far the administration has rejected any labeling laws. When it comes to health, Bush appointed Tommy G. Thompson for Health and Human Services Secretary. Thompson owned somewhere between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock in the tobacco empire Philip Morris. He received over $72,000 in campaign contributions from them during the 1990’s. Philip Morris, during this election year alone, has already shelled out over one million dollars combined to both Democrats and Republicans (Center for Responsive Politics, 2001). The battle between the campaign against big tobacco companies and what actually occurs due to their lobbying strength became clear when Thompson was appointed to oversee the heath and human services department of this country.

The list of cabinet members with ties to corporations goes on and on. What this equates to is a free range of laws, breaks, and access to lawmakers for mega-corporations. This turna what would be normally seen as an act of deviance into a normal act of government. By allowing this to occur, deviance becomes a regular activity, one ignored by the mainstream corporate-owned press, which gives no information to the majority of the population about the criminal activities and free rides many millionaires and their businesses receive. It becomes a clear case of the rule-makers setting the norms and being above rule breaking.

Even when caught and convicted of a crime, often the white-collar criminal is handed a fine which amounts to the price of their children’s private school tuition. Tough sentencing leading to time served in a high security prison rarely occurs. Fines become worth the price of violating laws and guidelines, as opposed to investing much more money to repair or restructure an entire system. This occurs mostly in environmental restrictions against corporations, where, if caught, a company will shell out a few million in order to keep the business running along. Stricter laws and fines must be in place in order to truly stop the deviance of ruining the planet and all of its life.

On the other end of the spectrum, the "war on drugs" has become an epidemic involving the middle- to lower classes of America. The black market income for marijuana is estimated at an annual cost of $25 billion (Schlosser, 2003:14), which exceeds the amount of any legal crop made in this country. From drug money, over $250 billion goes through US banks each year (Chomsky, 1996:36). From this number alone, it is clear the “war on drugs” is not working, nor is it a profitable thing to terminate. In 1998, Congress, working with Institute for a Drug Free Workplace, passed The Drug Free Workplace Act. This act was made to give small businesses the funds for testing for drugs in employees. The Institute for a Drug Free Workplace was made up of members from the pharmaceutical firms which directly benefitted from the act. Drug testing kits made by pharmaceutical firms now make $740 million per year (Schlosser, 2003:51).

With incentives to seize assets in drug cases, whereby the money or property is divided among the law enforcement agencies involved, the fight against this deviant act is more a battle over cash than crime. Even those involved in the criminal acts are profiting from the government’s battle against drugs, as up to one-quarter of the assets seized can be handed over to informants. In 1995 the government gave over $100,000 to informants in drug busts (Schlosser, 2003:62). Clearly, if the black market of drug trafficking was removed from our society, there would be a large gap in our nation’s economy .

Where does criminal activity lead to for most people? As tougher mandatory sentences are handed out, a new business emerges as a means to profit from these acts. Each year, at least $35 billion is spent on prison incarceration. As more and more prisons become privatized, and more and more are being built, there becomes a grand fortune to be made. There were 724,000 arrests made in 2001 for violation of marijuana laws (Schlosser, 2003:54). This can easily equate to billions, if not trillions of dollars for large businesses invested in the prison system. Since tougher drug laws made in 1986 (Anti-Drug Abuse Act), the percentage of drug offenders in prison went from thirty percent in 1984 (prior to the laws being made), up to fifty-seven percent in 2001.

Wackenhut, the largest of the privatized prison owners, makes about $2.2 billion per year and was placed on Forbes Magazine’s Platinum List of the best big companies in the United States (Mares, 2000). The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) together with Wackenhut control 75 percent of the U.S. private prison market (Greene, 2003:139). As the “war on drugs” competes with the “war on terror,” more prisons are being built both here and abroad, housing (in this country) mostly poor minorities. When a privately owned prison’s main interest is making money for the owners, the safety and well-being of prisoners can be overlooked or ignored. The average prisoner-on-prisoner murder rate in America in 1998 was one murder for every 22,000 prisoners. The homicide rate in Wackenhut’s New Mexico facilities was one murder for every 400 prisoners (Greene, 2003:139-140). The owners of private prisons are investing in the deviance of others and the reliable strict sentencing of judges. This can equal great amounts of wealth.

A new large group of prisoners came onto the scene in the 1990’s as a result of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. This nearly doubled the number of illegal immigrants in the prison system: 36,000 as of 2002. These “criminal aliens” are non-citizens serving criminal sentences in federal prisons. Over one-third of these individuals were sentenced for immigration violations, and a mere 1.5 percent were sentenced for violent crimes. This figure shows why more privately run prisons are taking in “criminal aliens.” Compare this to the prisoner population composed of U.S. citizens, 15 percent of which are convicted for violent crimes (Greene, 2003:143). Privately run prisons can therefor be lacking in security and safety, as there is less chance of an accident or event when the population consists of nonviolent offenders.

Another way to profit from the criminals inside the prison walls is to use them for low-wage, non-unionized labor. As attempts grow to eliminate any labor rights laws for prisoners, many companies are taking advantage of this in-country cheap work force. The Boeing Corporation, who build airplanes, uses parts made by MicroJet, which uses worker at the Washington State Reformatory (Wright, 2003:116). By paying the workers/prisoners four times less than those paid at Boeing’s Everett plant, Boeing is now saving millions of dollars.

With the creation of the USA PATRIOT ACT, Attorney General John Ashcroft broadened the definition of deviance. At this point in time, anyone deemed by the president to be an “enemy combatant” can be arrested and detained indefinitely, and can be subjected to the jurisdiction of military tribunals. The PATRIOT ACT allows that any person or persons who may have opposing views or values can be put under surveillance, have their home searched without alerting them (sneak & peek), have their bank accounts frozen, and be held without providing an attorney. Right now in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, over 600 people are being detained, without any charges being brought against them. Any person in the wrong place at the wrong time can be taken prisoner and held with little hope of freedom. No specific charges were ever filed against the over 900 prisoners only recently released from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (Associated Press, 2004).
The need for technology to advance the "war on terror" created another giant source of income for big telecommunication and technology businesses. Companies are making “Patriot Act”-compliant computer systems which allow banks to prove they’re not laundering terrorist’s money. One major corporation benefitting from this trend is Sybase Inc., which developed a “Sybase PATRIOT compliance Solution'' in 2002. The connections between business and government crosses again when we look at the investors of Sybase Inc.: 5.5 million shares of Sybase are owned by The Chatterjee Group, which is partly made up of a company called Winston Partners, a investment firm. Marvin Bush, the President’s younger bother, is the cofounder and partner of Winston Partners. Sybase received over $14 million worth of contracts with various governmental departments in 2001 (Burns, 2002).
Even if the government is not gaining monetary profit, the removal of resistance against the system can be rewarding enough to those in power. When dissent can be seen as a crime, our nation loses its ability to be democratic. Using loaded language like “terror”, “freedom”, and “justice”, the government spreads nationalism and offenses to normal citizens can be overlooked. As the war on terror continues, it becomes harder and harder to voice any opposition to the tactics of the government. More restrictions grow on the citizens of the country, and what seems to be happening is that deviance from any norm will be squashed in no time.
Nationally, what is happening now is that the definition of deviant behavior is becoming too vague to clearly define. It becomes something which can be applied to almost all actions against the very patriotic, christian, conservative, capitalist actions which mirror the current administration’s beliefs. This leads us down a very dangerous road as the rule-makers allow privileged rule-breakers to set the tone of the norm while punishing those who don’t have enough resources to have a say.

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Sources
Greene, Judith And Wright, Paul. 2003. Prison Nation - The Warehousing of America’s Poor. Routledge:New York, NY

Schlosser, Eric. 2003. Reefer Madness - Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market.Houghton Mifflin Company: New York, NY

Chomsky, Noam. 1998. The Common Good. Odonian Press: Monroe,ME

Center for American Progress (2004, April 15).Tax Day: Corporations and Wealthy Paying Less. Retrieved June 2, 2004 from the Center for American Progress on the World Wide Web:
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=45747

Open Secrets (2001) The Bush Administration - Corporate Connections. Retreived June 2, 2004 from Open Secrets on the World Wide Web: http://www.opensecrets.org/bush/cabinet.asp

Mares, P (2000, Nov. 23) Private detention centres reap mammoth profits. Retreived June 2, 2004 from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on the World Wide Web: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/s215963.htm

Hauser, C (2004, May 28) U.S. Releases More Prisoners From Abu Ghraib. The New York Times. Retrieved June 1, 2004 from the New York Times Online database. World Wide Web: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/28/international/middleeast/28CND-PRIS.html

Burns, M (2002, Dec. 1) Bush family dipping into security pie. Retreived June 1, 2004 from the Disinfo on the World Wide Web: http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/article/id2942/pg1/

craig as a verb

craig as a verb - ego is soft and sculptable

the sqautbox comedy hour
am fm lover mess
reagan's death is celebrated by the whites
giant robot dental work
when a man becomes a boy
i am the leader needed to stop all the monsters i told you about!
Old Bull Lee makes his way through the formula & decides to walk away

Rumsfeld Escapes

A press conference was held at the Surry Nuclear Power Plant today, responding to claims that Donald Rumsfeld has escaped from his testing laboratory. What was supposed to be a top-secret experiment has turned into a national disaster and global concern. Scientist David Rastmer, Ph.D. gave a press conference today, admitting to a year-long research project designed to create a "super-human" Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It is still unclear as to what went wrong, but as of 9 am today, the mutated Rumsfeld escaped the lab and ran off into the wilderness.

"We were nowhere near completion," reports Rastmer, "all we've given him is super-human speed and the ability to breathe underwater. Also, he has the ability to turn into a wall, seeming invisible to those without specially designed optical lenses."

Scientists contacted military officials immediately after the escape. State and local police were sent into the wilderness to find the Defense Secretary. "We didn't think we'd ever have to worry about something like this. [Rumsfeld] was always excited about the possibilities of being a super-human, and he was patient, agreeable, and helpful in the lab. Some colleagues think it was the mutated hormones we were giving him to withstand nuclear exposure."

Rastmer reported that the original idea of a mutant Rumsfeld came from the Pentagon. "They called us and offered us about 1/3 of the defense budget (roughly $133 billion) just to mutate Donald. We couldn't turn down that type of money, plus imagine the research we'd gain from this!" Pentagon officials did not deny the reports of the "Super-Rummy Project", claiming it was based on the ideas of The Five Chinese Brothers, a childhood book many officials recalled reading. "We discussed the idea of one man having all the abilities that those brothers possessed, and how incredible it could be," reported General Richard C Humpling. "When it came down to applying the idea to an actual person, of course Secretary Rumsfeld was the natural answer."

When alerted of Rumsfeld's escape, President Bush immediately ordered the firing of missiles at Russia, misunderstanding the word "Rumsfeld." After the clarification and apology to our soviet brothers, Bush had this to say to the press: "As a nation, it is an unimpossiblity to ever conceive what Secretary Rumsfeld has done for our country. His willingness to exceed the uncompromised patriotism of this country, bringing the nation's defense into his own DNA, will forever be honored and never unforgotten. There is no better warrior against terror and for freedom than this man/mutant/fish. If anyone out there sees Secretary Rumsfeld, please alert him that I need my blueprints for Cuba's invasion back."

Rumsfeld has been spotted running at what spectators report as "totally fast speed" throughout the countryside of Virginia. It is estimated that with his top speed and aqua-lungs, he could reach France by Sunday morning. An alert was issued by the military to "old Europe" that Rumsfeld still might foster some anger over the reluctance of certain countries from joining in on the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Now more than ever.

As it is announced that Ralph Nader plans to hold a convention for placement upon Oregon 's voter ballot in November, it seems more needed than ever. There are 2 choices we are given, a "Democrat" & a "Republican." If it is hard to decipher which is which, you are not alone.

In what seems to be happening more and more, is that we are forced to choose between two versions of the same character. Yes W. has gotten a bit far off, but John Kerry won't bring things to any suitable situation. Kerry's policies appear to be in the vain of being "A Better Bush." America doesn't need the original, nor the cheap replica, America needs drastic change. Ralph Nader, and all other third, forth, fifth, etc. party candidates, need to be embraced to enact change through elections.

Nader is the only one speaking about stopping the illegal occupation in Iraq, working towards universal health care, and changing our government so that corporations don't control the puppet strings. The self-proclaimed "democrat" John F. Kerry, a multi-multi millionaire himself, is just another character to fill in the role of ruler for the rich, protector of the shareholders, and defender of the boardroom.

I am not accepting John Kerry as a candidate. He is, just as Bush jr. is, not suitable to represent the majority of this nation. When given just two choices, more importantly, THESE two choices, democracy is spitting in our faces. The need for more parties on the November ballot is stronger than ever.

By electing John Kerry, we're just ignoring the problem that the entire system represents. Of course W has been one of the worse leaders of all time, but by electing JFK, we're just allowing similar, more watered down policies to occur. Kerry is not the answer, and Bush jr. doesn't even know there's a problem. What's needed are more candidates representing the actual majority and NOT the capital kingpins which want to continue dominating the world and exploiting their workers/prisoners/slaves.

Pepsi vs. Coke?

Nader's nominating convention will be on June 26th at Benson High School Auditorium from 5 to 7pm.

Identity Crisis

(I) Anarchism, n. 1. The doctrine that a stateless society is possible and desirable. Obsolete. 2. Rule by anarchists.

(2) Anarchism, properly understood, has nothing to do with standards and values in a moral sense. Morality is to the mind what the state is to society: an alien and alienating limitation on liberty, and an inversion of ends and means. For anarchists, standards and values are best understood - that is, they are most useful

(3) To speak of anarchist standards and values, then, is not necessarily nonsensical—but it does involve risks, often avoidable risks. In a society still saturated with Christianity and its secular surrogates, the risk is that the traditional absolutist use of these moralistic words will carry over to the way the anarchists use them. Do you have standards and values or do they have you? It is usually better (but of course, not necessarily or absolutely better) for anarchists to avoid the treacherous vocabulary of moralism and just say directly what they want, why they want it, and why they want everybody to want it. In other words, to put our cards on the table.

(4) Like standards and values, the anarchist “isms,” old and new, are best regarded as resources, not restraints. They exist for us, not us for them. It doesn’t matter if I, for instance, may have gotten more out of situationism than syndicalism, whereas another anarchist has gotten more out of feminism or Marxism or Islam. Where we have visited and even where we come from are less important than where we are and where, if anywhere, we’re going—or if we are going to the same place.

(5) Let “Type 1” refer to anarcho-leftism. Let “Type 2” refer to anarcho-capitalism. Let “Type 3” refer to the meta-typical (“names name me not”). The Type 3 anarchist categorically rejects categorization. His “existence precedes his essence” (Sartre). For her, nothing is necessarily necessary, and everything is possibly possible. He thinks immediatism takes too long. “She flies on strange wings” (Shocking Blue). Winston Churchill’s wife once complained about his drinking. Churchill replied that he had taken more out of alcohol than alcohol had taken out of him. The Type 3 anarchist takes more out of anarchism than anarchism takes out of her. And he tries to get more out of life than life gets out of him. A loving, thoughtful, self-affirming, predatory orientation has as many practical applications as the ingenuity and imagination of the Type 3 suggests to her.

(6) In principle, the rejection of principles of universal application has universal application. In practice, every individual has his limitations, and the force of circumstances varies. There’s no formula for success, not even the recognition that there’s no formula for success. But reason and experience identify certain areas of foreseeable futility. It is easy and advisable, for instance, for anarchists to abstain from electoral politics. It is preferable but often not possible to abstain from work, although it is usually possible to engage in some workplace resistance without undue risk. Crime, the black market, and tax evasion are sometimes realistic alternatives or adjuncts to involvement in the state-sanctioned system. Everyone has to evaluate his own circumstances with an open mind. Do the best you can and try not to get caught. Anarchists have enough martyrs already.

(7) Anarchism is in transition, and many anarchists are experiencing anxiety. It is very easy to advocate changing the world. Talk is cheap. It is not so easy to change your own small corner of it. The differences among the traditional anarchist tendencies are irrelevant because the traditional anarchist tendencies are themselves irrelevant. (For present purposes let’s disregard the Type 2, free-market anarchists who seem to have no noticeable presence except in the United States, and even there they have little dialogue with, and less influence over the rest of us.) The worldwide, irreversible, and long-overdue decline of the left precipitated the current crisis among anarchists.

(8) Anarchists are having an identity crisis. Are they still, or are they only, the left wing of the left wing? Or are they something more or even something else? Anarchists have always done much more for the rest of the left than the rest of the left has ever done for them. Any anarchist debt to the left has long since been paid in full, and then some. Now, finally, the anarchists are free to be themselves. But freedom is a frightening, uncertain prospect, whereas the old ways, the leftist clichés and rituals, are as comfortable as a pair of old shoes (including wooden shoes). What’s more, since the left is no longer any kind of threat, anarcho-Ieftists are in no danger of state repression when they remember and reenact their ancient, mythic glories. That’s about as revolutionary as smoking hash, and the state tolerates both for the same reason.

(9) Just how “anarchistic” is the world anyway? In one way, very anarchistic; in another, not at all. It is very anarchistic in the sense that, as Kropotkin argued, human society, human life itself, always depends far more on voluntary cooperative action than on anything the state orders. Under severely statist regimes—the former Soviet Union or present-day New York City—the regime itself depends on widespread violations of its laws to stay in power and keep life going. In another way, the world is not anarchist at all, because no human population exists anywhere any more which is not subject to some degree of control by some state.

War is too important to be left to the generals, and anarchy is too important to be left to the anarchists. Every tactic is worth trying by anyone inclined to try it, although proven mistakes—such as voting, burning books (especially mine), random violence, and allying with the authoritarian left—are best avoided. If anarchists haven’t learned how to revolutionize the world, hopefully they have learned a few ways how not to. That’s not enough, but it is something.

(10) To speak of priorities is an improvement on speaking of standards and values, as the word is less burdened with moralistic overtones. But again, do you have priorities, or do priorities have you?

(11) Self-sacrifice is counter-revolutionary. Anyone capable of sacrificing himself for a cause is capable of sacrificing someone else for it too. Therefore, solidarity among the self-sacrificial is impossible. You just can’t trust an altruist. You never know when he might commit some disastrous act of benevolence.

(12) “The struggle against oppression” —what a fine phrase! A circus-tent commodious enough to cover every leftist cause, however clownish, and the less relevant it is to the revolution of everyday life, the better. Free Mumia! Independence for East Timor! Medicines for Cuba! Ban land mines! Ban dirty books! Viva Chiapas! Legalize pot! Save the whales! Free Nelson Mandela!—no wait, they already did that, now he is a head of state, and will any anarchist’s life ever be the same? Everybody is welcome under the big top, on one condition: that he refrain from any and all critique of any and all of the others. You sign my petition and I’ll sign yours. . .

By maintaining the public image of a common struggle against oppression, leftists conceal, not only their actual fragmentation, incoherence and weakness, but—paradoxically—what they really do share: acquiescence in the essential elements of state/class society. Those who are content with the illusion of community are reluctant to risk losing its modest satisfactions, and maybe more, by going for the real thing. All the advanced industrialized democracies tolerate a leftists loyal opposition, which is only fair, since it tolerates them.

stolen from the slingshot! written by bob black

KILLER, COWARD, CON-MAN GOOD RIDDANCE, GIPPER ...

KILLER, COWARD, CON-MAN GOOD RIDDANCE, GIPPER ...
MORE PROOF ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG
by Greg Palast
Sunday, June 6, 2004

You're not going to like this. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. But in this case, someone's got to.

Ronald Reagan was a conman. Reagan was a coward. Reagan was a killer.

In 1987, I found myself stuck in a crappy little town in Nicaragua named Chaguitillo. The people were kind enough, though hungry, except for one surly young man. His wife had just died of tuberculosis.

People don't die of TB if they get some antibiotics. But Ronald Reagan, big hearted guy that he was, had put a lock-down embargo on medicine to Nicaragua because he didn't like the government that the people there had elected.

Ronnie grinned and cracked jokes while the young woman's lungs filled up and she stopped breathing. Reagan flashed that B-movie grin while they buried the mother of three.

And when Hezbollah terrorists struck and murdered hundreds of American marines in their sleep in Lebanon, the TV warrior ran away like a whipped dog … then turned around and invaded Grenada. That little Club Med war was a murderous PR stunt so Ronnie could hold parades for gunning down Cubans building an airport.

I remember Nancy, a skull and crossbones prancing around in designer dresses, some of the "gifts" that flowed to the Reagans -- from hats to million-dollar homes -- from cronies well compensated with government loot. It used to be called bribery.

And all the while, Grandpa grinned, the grandfather who bleated on about "family values" but didn't bother to see his own grandchildren.

The New York Times today, in its canned obit, wrote that Reagan projected, "faith in small town America" and "old-time values." "Values" my ass. It was union busting and a declaration of war on the poor and anyone who couldn't buy designer dresses. It was the New Meanness, bringing starvation back to America so that every millionaire could get another million.

"Small town" values? From the movie star of the Pacific Palisades, the Malibu mogul? I want to throw up.

And all the while, in the White House basement, as his brain boiled away, his last conscious act was to condone a coup d'etat against our elected Congress. Reagan's Defense Secretary Casper the Ghost Weinberger with the crazed Colonel, Ollie North, plotted to give guns to the Monster of the Mideast, Ayatolla Khomeini.

Reagan's boys called Jimmy Carter a weanie and a wuss although Carter wouldn't give an inch to the Ayatolla. Reagan, with that film-fantasy tough-guy con in front of cameras, went begging like a coward cockroach to Khomeini pleading on bended knee for the release of our hostages.

Ollie North flew into Iran with a birthday cake for the maniac mullah -- no kidding --in the shape of a key. The key to Ronnie's heart.

Then the Reagan roaches mixed their cowardice with crime: taking cash from the hostage-takers to buy guns for the "contras" - the drug-runners of Nicaragua posing as freedom fighters.

I remember as a student in Berkeley the words screeching out of the bullhorn, "The Governor of the State of California, Ronald Reagan, hereby orders this demonstration to disperse" … and then came the teargas and the truncheons. And all the while, that fang-hiding grin from the Gipper.

In Chaguitillo, all night long, the farmers stayed awake to guard their kids from attack from Reagan's Contra terrorists. The farmers weren't even Sandinistas, those 'Commies' that our cracked-brained President told us were 'only a 48-hour drive from Texas.' What the hell would they want with Texas, anyway?

Nevertheless, the farmers, and their families, were Ronnie's targets.

In the deserted darkness of Chaguitillo, a TV blared. Weirdly, it was that third-rate gangster movie, "Brother Rat." Starring Ronald Reagan.

Well, my friends, you can rest easier tonight: the Rat is dead.

Killer, coward, conman. Ronald Reagan, good-bye and good riddance.

http://gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=336&row=0

Our choices

For your ears only

Ronald Reagan is Dead

Out of work actor forced to turn puppet politician dead at 93

UN: US abuses in Iraq might be war crimes

Prisoner abuse in Iraq "might be designated as war crimes"

A top UN human rights official on Friday said US-led occupation forces have mistreated ordinary Iraqis and called for an international ombudsman to monitor their behaviour.

Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights Bertrand Ramcharan also suggested in a new report that US soldiers accused of human rights violations in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison could be guilty of war crimes.

There have been "serious human rights problems" under the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) including the jailing of large numbers of people "without anyone knowing how many, for what reasons... and how they were being treated," he said.

Testimonies

His report, for the UN's Human Rights Commission, quoted interviewed Iraqis who spoke of "arbitrary arrests and detention as an ongoing phenomenon" since US-led forces occupied Iraq in March 2003.

In a clear reference to Abu Ghraib, Ramcharan said "willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment" of detainees are a grave breach of international law.

Such acts, he added, "might be designated as war crimes by a competent tribunal."

Ramcharan, a British-trained barrister from Guyana and long-time UN official, said that the Coalition authorities "should appoint immediately an International Ombudsman or Commissioner" on human rights.

High price

The report, which was commented on by US and British authorities prior to its release, acknowledged the removal of Saddam Hussein's government as "a major contribution to human rights in Iraq."

Released Iraqi prisoners said they were tortured

But, it cited various reports of mistreatment by troops of Iraqi men, women and children, and declared that coalition forces in the country had in effect "immunity" from any impartial jurisdiction for wrongful acts and rights abuses.

However, Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi told Aljazeera.net the US contribution to human rights in Iraq may have come at too high a price.

Fourteen months since the occupation, the people do not have full access to basic needs like pure water and electricity, [must they endure] miserable medical care, and above all, are faced with the lack of security.?

Aljazeera + Agencies

Action! Come Protest Portland Police Brutality

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . . "

These words are nearly as hollow today as they were when written over 200 years
ago.

The Portland Police Department has been involved in countless incidents
that illustrate the effects of training officers in a culture of fear. In addition
to countless violations of civil rights, we have also seen multiple deaths
resulting from questionable police conduct.

Vera Katz serves dually as Mayor and Police Commissioner of Portland.
We believe that she has the moral obligation to see that a change is made
in the Portland Police Department's training policy and procedures for
disciplining officers guilty of abusing their power, including killing unarmed civilians.

Former Police Chief Mark Kroeker arguably lost his position due to issues
related to police brutality and we hope that Chief Foxworth can work with
Vera Katz and our new mayor to address this serious and pervasive problem.

Oncap, the Organization for Non-Complacency Among the People
is a student activist group here in Portland.
We fight to shed light on issues and educate our fellow community members.
We can be reached via email at oncap1@hotmail.com

At high noon this Saturday, June 5, we will be placing an effigy tombstone
for all victims of Portland police brutality near the intersection of NW 21st and Johnson St. We are inviting activists and artists from across the area to read their own poetry, make their music, or speak their mind about the latest in an ongoing string of incidents, the killing of James Jahar Perez. Please bring a flower for the tombstone.

If more people show up than expected, we will be moving the gathering a few
blocks away to Couch Park at NW 21st and Glisan.

War on Terror Targets Everyone

The Non-elected Rulers of Earth

The monsters who just wantonly blew away over 40 men, women and children at a wedding party in Iraq near the Syrian border are the same U.S. forces who authorized vicious tortures and killings around the world. Daily new Internet pictures of Abu Ghraib reveal fresh glimpses of hell: a combination of the techniques of Southern racist terror with pornographic humiliation and the CIA's "scientific" infliction of pain. Now that some of the photos are out, the capitalist media admit that the White House and Pentagon had their bureaucrats and lawyers advise on just how much murderous terror they could get away with.

This world of fear is what the government wants to apply to any "dissenters" here at home. Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has cynically manipulated the population's horror at the heinous attack on the World Trade Center to massively intensify an assault on civil liberties and vastly expand police powers. Untold thousands have been swept up in racist roundups of mainly Near Eastern, South Asian and Muslim people, detained without charges, tortured and abused in prisons across America. Thousands more have been deported, often to be tortured and killed. The anti-terror laws are now being used to prosecute people who have nothing even allegedly to do with "terrorism." This May a Mexican street gang in the Bronx was indicted on 70 counts, including murder and robberies, under New York's new anti-terror law. Bronx district attorney said the terror stipulation was justified while noting the statute is "to protect society against acts of political terrorism."

This April the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in three important "war on terror" cases challenging some of the government's most aggressive efforts to shred civil liberties. The stakes in these cases are high, for what the government is asserting is nothing less than its right to disappear citizens and strip them of their formal and fundamental democratic rights. There has always been a wide gulf between formal bourgeois legality, race- and class-biased repression and violence that are routine to capitalist rule. If the government does away with even the formal nods to democratic rights, then "justice" in this country is going to resemble the rule of reactionary juntas and dictatorships propped up by the American imperialism around the globe. If they can effectively abolish citizenship rights, then the plight of immigrants here and foreign victims of U.S. policies will be even worse.

On April 28, appeals were presented on behalf of two American citizens held indefinitely as "enemy combatants" without charges or a hearing. One of these prisoners, Yaser Esam Hamdi, was detained in Afghanistan in late 2001. The other, Jose Padilla, was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago O'Hare airport on a material witness warrant and then turned over to military authorities. This year, on April 20, lawyers presented the appeal of foreign nationals arrested in Afghanistan and dragged to the hellhole U.S. military camp in Guantanamo, Cuba, where over 600 are now detained.

The Guantanamo prisoners are seeking the right to challenge their captivity in American courts through a habeas corpus petition. With supreme arrogance, the government asserts that American courts have no right to review a presidential decision, and that the U.S. has no jurisdiction over Guantanamo prisoners because the American army base is on Cuban territory. We Trotskyists suggest then that the Cuban government assert its authority over this imperialist beachhead on the Cuban- deformed Workers State. U.S. out of Guantanamo! Free all the detainees, from Guantanamo to Iraq to the U.S.!

The Padilla Case: Evisceration of Citizenship

"Today the government asks this court for a broad ruling that would allow the president unlimited power to imprison any American anywhere at any time without trial simply by labeling him an enemy combatant," warned Padilla's attorney, Jennifer Martinez, in the Supreme Court hearing. On April 9, the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee filed a brief of amici curiae (friends of the court) on Padilla's behalf, just as in July of 2003 when his [Padilla's] case was argued in the U.S. court of Appeals in New York. The brief argues that this case "tests the very existence of the fundamental rights and privileges of citizenship embodied in the Bill of Rights, and secured on the battlefield of the Civil War and in class and social struggle over the past hundred and more years. If the imperial President is upheld, Padilla's detention threatens to become the Dred Scott case of our time, a declaration that "Citizens have no rights that the government is bound to respect."

Born in the Brooklyn of Puerto Rican background, Padilla grew up in Chicago and as a young man converted to Islam, changed his name to Ibrahim and moved to Egypt, where he now has a wife and two children. In May 2002, he was traveling back to Chicago to visit his family, but was seized at the airport on vague claims that he was associated with Al Qaeda, and involved in a "plot" to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the U.S. No charges have been presented against Padilla, and the government has admitted that it is a "weak case". Yet Padilla has been denied any ability to challenge his detention, and has not been allowed to see a lawyer since he's been in military detention except for one visit a month ago, with military brass watching and taping the whole discussion so that no confidential legal defense could be discussed.

Meanwhile as theNew York Times (13 May) reported, Padilla's name was extracted under "intensive questioning" (a euphemism for torture) of a man captured by the CIA. Authorized "intensive questioning" techniques include strapping down a prisoner and pushing him underwater until he nearly drowns. As the Times noted, "These techniques were authorized by a set of secret rules that were endorsed by the Justice Department and the C.I.A." The rules were among the first adopted by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 attacks for handling detainees and may have helped establish a new understanding throughout the government that officials would have greater freedom to deal harshly with detainees.

Another extremely ominous case brought down by the government seeks to shut down free speech using the USA-Patriot Act, which was passed with bipartisan support after the September 11 attacks. Sami Omar al-Hussayen, the father of three children, has been in prison over a year. He is a doctoral candidate in computer science at the University of Idaho, where he led a candlelight vigil the night of the September 11 to condemn the World Trade Center attack. Now al-Hussayen, a leader of the university's Muslim Student Association, is accused of "terrorism" based solely on the fact that he set up some Islam-oriented Internet Web sites and e-mail discussion groups on which people posted arguments for and against "jihad." It is not even clear, or relevant in the government's view, whether al-Hussayen even knew these postings were being made. Such attempts to prove guilt by Internet association could target anyone who ever logged on to any site with a link to anything, whether the content is known or not. The USA-Patriot omnibus witchhunting act outlaws "material support" to "terrorists," but this "crime" is so vaguely defined that it could include giving money away to a bake sale to fund health clinics in Turkey or Sri Lanka, if the recipients were affiliated with groups such as the Kurdistan Workers Party or Tamil Tigers, both designated "terrorist" the U.S. government. The U.S. government's "terrorist" label is to be applied as broadly as suits its nefarious purposes.

Reprinted from The Workers Vanguard, 28 May 2004, pg. 1, 8